Theories of Victorian Preaching

Most Victorian homileticians expected the sermon to be a blend of classical
oration and literary essay. They agreed with Aristotle's and Cicero's assertion
that rhetoric is, above all else, the art of persuasive speaking (De
Inventione I.v; Rhetoric I.2). As H. Rogers
wrote in 1840, the only discourses "entitled to the name" of
sermons were those "specially adapted to the object of instructing,
convincing, or persuading the common mind" (70).

Victorian theorists also shared Aristotle's belief that orator's character
is "the most effective means of persuasion he possesses"
(Rhetoric
I.2). Perhaps the best statement about the importance of the preacher's
ethos appeared in William Thomson's essay "On
the Emotions in Preaching": "I have ventured to think,"
he wrote, "that good men sometimes preach bad sermons, but I do not
forget that bad men will never preach good ones" (101).

Most Victorians departed from classical theory in their standards for
the structure and style of the sermon. Cicero's six-part
structure--"exordium,
narrative, partition, confirmation, refutation, [and] peroration"
(De Inventione I.xiv)--was a prominent feature of earlier secular
and sacred rhetoric, but it received very little attention in the latter
part of the nineteenth century. The only structural components discussed
in Victorian homiletic manuals were the application, which was regarded
as an "essential part of every good sermon" (Gresley
246), and the partition, which most rejected as "inexpedient,"
"complicated," and "decidedly undesirable" (Thorold
9; Rogers 88; William Davies 71).